


Black Bolt Attends Group Therapy

by thrakaboom



Series: Poetry [1]
Category: DCU (Comics), Marvel (Comics)
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Gen, Mentioned other characters - Freeform, Poetry
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-20
Updated: 2020-06-20
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:21:53
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 660
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24825997
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/thrakaboom/pseuds/thrakaboom
Summary: A poem about disabled superheroes, and the nature of disability. From the point of view of Black Bolt.
Series: Poetry [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1795732
Comments: 4
Kudos: 21





	Black Bolt Attends Group Therapy

**Author's Note:**

> I thought I had posted this before. It was the accumulation of an entire semester of a poetry class and the work I wrote that meant the most to me.

Black Bolt passes

Moon Knight and Two-Face in the doorway

Stamping out their cigarettes. 

Catching parting remarks--

“You have to learn to live with each other,

You only have one body.”

Black Bolt wipes his hands on his pants

surprised to find them sweaty.

Puts his palm to his lips like a child 

It has been so long since he attended anything

Without his wife at his side --

His speaker, his translator, his voice.

The building was left when the comic studios moved west,

Drawing boards pushed aside,

Leftover chairs in a circle.

One desk has the coffee and donuts.

Black Bolt stands awkward like a teenager.

He does not feel like a king, not here.

_Is this the right place?_

He lets his last sign hang 

in the air stuck to his fingers like tar.

Attilan has no sign language, 

Not even when it became clear the prince

Would not speak.

He had been assured his family 

Would speak for him.

ASL had been difficult

He hadn’t expected how freeing.

Hawkeye waves from beside the coffee. His shirt

Matching the purple of his hearing aids.

When they fought together

Hawkeye was careful to enunciate

Now his voice is choppy, singing along with his words

“Hey, Bolt, welcome. This is the place.”

Black Bolt swallows, nods, waves back, thinking,

Should he really be here?

Cyborg, massaging his joints where flesh meets metal

Invites him to sit with him and Jericho, laughing

_there are no company lines here-_

Black Bolt sits, trying not to stare at the white line

Across Jericho’s throat.

“Besides,” Oracle says, rims of her chair glittering

Under the dingy lights. “We've been here so long 

Junior still considers himself a Fawcett Boy,

and Doc Mid-Nite an All-American.”

Captain Marvel Junior snorts, holding his crutch between

His legs as he sits, brace barely noticeable under his pants.

Echo is the only other woman,

She lingers around the rundown desk, signing

With Hawkeye- their own private jokes.

He's not sure if she telling Hawkeye

“Fuck you” or “thank you”.

Doctor Mid-Nite starts the meeting as the oldest,

Dark goggles pushed up to reveal glassy eyes and the scars around them,

Still pink after almost eighty years.

Welcomes everyone back

Letting Hawkeye play interpreter for Jericho and Echo.

“I’ll go first,” Daredevil interrupts and even

Red tinted sunglasses cannot hide his anger.

“I am tired of being an inspiration.”

Daredevil does not spit on the ground

Because he's a lawyer with all the poise attached

To the crisp suits and the even voice

But he’s a boxer’s son and wears horns at night

“I’m tired of being made out to not really be blind.”

Oracle laughs deep and hollow

“At least they didn’t try to 'cure' you and send you back

To all you were before, 

Like this chair destroyed my appeal.

You can’t go back to being Batgirl.

Not outside our comic book panels.”

Black Bolt presses his hands to his mouth again, 

Wondering if he is faking it, if he is a fraud.

Levelling buildings with a word made him mute

Not a deformation to his vocal chords.

Does he count? Should he be here?

Should he count?

Captain Marvel Junior speaks next

His hair combed back like Elvis and twice as stylish. 

He could have been popular with the girls at school.

“I think I’m a metaphor now that times have changed.

People say I don’t count, that when I transform I’m not 

A Real Cripple.

I think I’m a metaphor now for things that are hidden. 

For people on the street you can't see are like us.”

_Maybe I have become a metaphor_

_In some accident of an editor’s pen,_

Black Bolt thinks, 

_Maybe I represent people who push themselves_

_But always pay the price._

Black Bolt never speaks.

He doesn’t have anything to say

When his turn comes around; he looks 

For Medusa to be his voice and ---

_Exhilarated? Terrified?--_

remembers he is his own.


End file.
